Objective:

To perform analyses on the seasonality of the Melolonthidae family in an oak grove adjacent to the Paramo de Santurbán Regional Natural Park, municipality of California, Santander, Colombia, as well as to explore the behavior of the food guilds found in the samplings.

Scope:

To contrast the fact that the Melolonthidae (and the different guilds) present annual variations that, in a certain way, can be related to several seasonal or environmental factors.

Methodology:

Light traps, fruit-traps and manual collection were used in an oak grove adjacent to the Paramo de Santurbán Regional Natural Park, municipality of California, Santander, Colombia. Analysis of the seasonality of beetles of the Melolonthidae (Coleoptera: Scarabaeoidea) family, as well as the food guilds, were carried out using multivariate analyses (GLM) to establish the correlation between them, the family, and the seasonal and biophysical factors in the study area.

Main results:

A total of 1,152 specimens of the Melolonthidae family, belonging to 16 genera and 26 species, were captured. The average minimum temperatures (mt), accumulated precipitation (P) and mean precipitation (medP) explain a high percentage of the variation of both abundance and species richness for the Melolonthidae family.

Conclusions:

The statistical analyses do not show a clear effect between the factors that could influence the richness and abundance of the different food guilds of Melolonthidae found for the study area. Based on the results obtained, the present study opens the door to the exploration of the causal effects highlighted in the analyses, which could have a great importance for the biodiversity of the different Melolonthidae beetle guilds.

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